The Long Christmas

Posted by admin - 26/12/15 at 06:12 am

In 2015, I attempted something sweet, and also quite stupid. Because of various scheduling difficulties, my Christmas season began on the last day of November. It was 26 straight days of the holiday season, and it was one I barely survived, much less enjoyed with yuletide glee. Here’s the day-by-day rundown on The Long Christmas.

Day 1: Picked up my daughter Pup today, packed the bags, and we head to Texas tomorrow for the holiday season to start. And thus begins…The Long Christmas.

Day 2: Went to bed at 2am in Sugartit, Kentucky. Set the alarm for 4:30am, so just enough time to lay there and fall asleep right around 4:27am. Four hours in airports and three on a plane (on “Crying Child Airlines”), five hours in a car and a half hour eating Dairy Queen tacos. Pup and I arrive in Beaumont, TX, for a plate of my dad’s famous stew and it is bedtime, amigos.

Day 3: A large present that was supposed to be delivered on Friday was actually sitting on the porch of my mom and dad’s house in a light drizzle when we arrived, so we had to/got to give them that one early. So it’s disappointing, but actually good news because we get to watch the games on their new TV for the rest of the week. Also? Whataburger.

Day 4: How was my holiday weekend? The drawstring on my lounge pants just exploded.

Good times with family, even if it doesn’t feel anything like Christmas outside. Which is fine, because we can celebrate with the best BBQ in the world. My blood is currently about 35% sauce. And I regret nothing.

Day 5: I get depressed around the holidays sometimes. Today I watched a drunk guy get cuffed, arrested, and hauled off from a Gander Mountain. That seemed to help my mood a lot.

Day 6: Bad thing about having Christmas in Beaumont: Sore from working in the garden. Good thing about it: It sure beats shoveling snow. Even better thing? Fish and shrimp for Christmas dinner while we put up the tree. Deck ’em, y’all.

Day 7: Popped into HEB in a mad hurry for one item. Got into the 15-Item line behind a woman with a buggy full. Full. Top and bottom. And then to finish it off, she bought six different Christmas cards. Which all had to be rung up separately. The cashier told her what she owed, and then she remembered she had a dollar-off coupon, which she had to find through a long term deep-sea purse excursion worthy of Jacques Cousteau.

Final tally, seventy-five bucks and eight bags of groceries in the express lane.

To stay calm behind her, I was humming Christmas carols under my breath, but they all came out sounding like Motörhead.

Merry Christmas! I didn’t kill anyone today. At all.

Day 8: Long day spent running around finishing things up. We end the evening playing Uno (and the Kerr-family-tradition Screw-no, which is even more awesome.) A great ending to the Beaumont portion of our holiday. Here’s to life, my friends.

Day 9: Another long travel day, but well worth it. Kerr Christmas part one is over, and a great time was had by all. Wonderful seeing my mom and dad, without their love, I wouldn’t have made it. I would have been just a free-floating cloud of unhappy sarcasm. Love you guys. See you soon.

Things I don’t want to see: My pilot getting on board with a bag of Wendy’s food. If something goes wrong on the plane, I don’t want the headlines to read “Flight Downed By Baconator.”

Day 10: A travel day finds us up at 530am Central Time to hustle out to DFW airport, and I wake up with Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me In Your Heart” stuck in my head. Which isn’t exactly the good kind of foreshadowing. Just for future reference, if anything bad happens to me today, I’ll be the one wearing my “The Flash” underwear.

Safe travels to all, especially us.

Day 11: Home again and back to work on the dozen projects I still have to finish before the holiday. Even better, I now have a sore throat, with a side order of low fever. Merry Christmas! Pa-rum-pah-pum-bleah.

Day 12: Movie Idea: “Sorry Actually.” It’s an ensemble rom-com where couples are forced to reexamine their relationships after one partner forces the other one to watch “Love Actually” every year on the pretense it’s a holiday movie.

I just got carded buying a bottle of wine. Apparently there’s been an outbreak in Kentucky of that Benjamin Button disease.

Day 13: This was a long, slow day of rest in hopes of getting over this sickness, made much better by several bowls of Lovely Wife Kimberly’s beef stew. And I may or may not have eaten a loaf of bread with it to sop up the bowls. At this point I’m only three weeks behind in shopping for Christmas, but that’s a problem to handle when I’m well. Or well-ish.

Day 14: Merry Christmas, chain-smoking pregnant woman outside of Target. You’re right, no one has ever done any research to show those two factors together indicate bad things. And thank you for reminding me that Kentucky is the Walmart of states.

Day 15: Just an awful day. Wretched. Couldn’t have gone worse if I had awoke to find the Elf on the Shelf cooking Meth in my Desk.

Day 16: The Christmas Blues have officially set in. I am neither holly not jolly, and merry is right out of the question. I’m in the kind of mood where if you start demanding your figgy putting and telling me you won’t go until you get some, I’ll probably slam a bowl upside your head.

Day 17: I’m not going to say Christmas time is frantic around our house, but I just realized all I ate for dinner last night were croutons.

Day 18: Finally some good news! I found out today that not only am I running second in the Presidential polls in Iowa, it now looks like I’m in line to start at quarterback for Texas A & M in the Music City Bowl.

Day 19: Just splurged and used some of my Christmas money to buy a new battery for my laptop, since I just found out my old battery lasts about as long as the flavor in gum. I went somewhere to write, and by the time I had it unpacked and booted up, it was already out and turned itself off. I like for my laptop batteries to last longer than my anger at them.

Day 20: Success! I finally found a Lego toy set honoring the most valuable member of the Dallas Cowboys organization this season.

Day 21: I couldn’t get through Christmas without my friends and family, wherever you guys are. Merry Christmas to all of you who make it possible. Especially Chuck McKinley and Roseanna Bolla for the Lewis Grizzard book! Love Grizzard. He was right up there with Bombeck and Barry for me. Thank you guys so much.

Day 22: It’s always good for my holiday spirit to remember I live somewhere people have to be reminded not to put their kids in a big enclosed playroom and then fire up a pack of Marlboros while they watch the little hellions run and climb and do other activities that cause rapid breathing.

Day 23: It dawns on me I forgot to send out Christmas cards this year, so please print out my Facebook profile picture and put in an envelope, then open it, smile briefly, and throw it away. Thanks for all your help.

Day 24: It’s very true, especially at this time of year, that the smallest of joys can be the greatest of presents. We should all remember that.

Also the greatest of presents? Actual presents, which explains why that woman in Target trying to get to the video games was throwing elbows at me like Karl Malone in the paint. Thank you, ma’am. Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like fresh upper-body bruises around the tree.

Day 25: This seems like a lot of people doing their Christmas shopping at the gift card section of Kroger on Christmas Eve.

There are two kinds of people in the world, people who don’t understand how anyone could ever be depressed at Christmas, and the rest of the world who has experienced it, and struggles sometimes, even more so around the holidays.

If you’re one of those people, I love you. Because I am you. And for my friends and family, both live and on Facebook, you mean more to me than I can articulate sometimes. Thank you guys and gals for all you do, for the little moments and connections that even in brief passing, make a huge difference.

If I’ve made you laugh this year, or you’ve thrown me a “like” or retweeted something of mine, thank you for condoning my behavior. Merry Christmas, everybody.

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